When a parent with dementia forgets you’re their child: coping with Alzheimer’s disease
In an excerpt from her book, Anthea Rowan highlights the struggles she faced when her mother no longer remembered she was her daughter
When Anthea Rowan learned her mother had Alzheimer’s disease, she knew little about dementia. When her mother forgot who her daughter was, though, Rowan was spurred on to learn all she could about this debilitating illness.
Understanding that dementia is not inevitable is key to preventing or delaying the condition. Rowan knows this now: since 2021, she has spoken with dozens of experts and read many reports to broaden her understanding.
She has also woven all this into her new book, A Silent Tsunami: Swimming Against the Tide of My Mother’s Dementia, which will be published on September 12 by Bedford Square. A combination of memoir and medicine, the book details her mother’s final struggle with dementia – and its impact on her own life – while interpreting the science that surrounds this illness.
- Cathy Hilborn Feng, health and wellness editor
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You wonder how, don’t you, you wonder how an illness could shear your children from you. What sickness could bear such devastating pathology that it would sever your children? Slice right through the emotional umbilicus that binds you – has bound you tightly for so many years.
